


In Silence

by eveningsoother (WhichWolfWins)



Series: Your Name Tattooed Across My Heart [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Minor Character Death, War, war death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 16:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1312348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhichWolfWins/pseuds/eveningsoother
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John gets home, there are some things he and Sherlock need to talk about.</p><p>Or, the one where Sherlock and John are both bottling up their feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Silence

There’s only one way to describe Sherlock Holmes when John is finally cleared to go home and that’s ‘clingy’. There isn’t a single moment during his first week back that Sherlock is further than 10 feet from him, excluding only when he goes to the loo. Every time John watches telly, every time he takes a shower, every time he reads a book, Sherlock is there, either pressed up against him or with his head in John’s lap. Whenever Sherlock dares to stray to his chemistry table in the corner of their sitting room, his eyes seem to spend more time on John than they do on the bubbling beakers directly in front of him.

And John understands, of course he does. He’s been gone 3 years and was nearly killed, but he feels like he can’t breathe, which is a feeling he’d grown used to during his time in Afghanistan. 

Even the sex was getting to be too much. If it wasn’t Sherlock’s hands on him, it was his mouth or his arse or that one time with his thighs. Sherlock was always tasting him, touching him, breathing him in, and John hated it as much as he loved it. He liked being missed, but at the same time he could tell that there was a much bigger picture here. With every touch Sherlock gave, another word was kept mum, and if there was one thing John was sure about, it was that Sherlock had something he wanted to say. 

It was most obvious when they were in bed together. No, not when they were fucking, because Sherlock was very vocal then, but when Sherlock lay with his arm across John’s stomach, tracing the shape of his name hidden by John’s bandage. It was then that John could almost hear the words whirring around inside Sherlock’s head. He could see them in the small part of Sherlock’s lips, struggling to find their way out into the open. 

The silence became unbearable one day as John sat on the sofa with the remote forgotten in his hand. It was one of the rare times where Sherlock was tinkering with his chemistry set rather than laying against John and John glanced over to catch Sherlock studying him for the 5th time in the span of 30 minutes. Having enough of Sherlock silence, John finally bit the bullet and turned his full attention to his boyfriend, much to the curiosity of Gladstone, who quirked his head up to follow John’s gaze to Sherlock. 

“Well, what is it?” John asked, lacing his fingers in his lap as he leaned back against the sofa and blinked across the room at Sherlock, 

“What is what, John?” Sherlock asked, his brow furrowed in a semblance of confusion. 

“Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about Sherlock. If you have something to say, say it.” 

Sherlock’s eyes fell away from him and he looked back at the only beaker of green liquid that wasn’t bubbling. He glanced back up at John and took a disconcerting breath. From a fraction of a second, John feared the worst. “Do you still love me?” 

The room fell into silence - even John’s heart stopped thudding. He was completely floored by the question and stared back at Sherlock in disbelief. “Do I still-” John shook his head. “Sherlock, of course I still love you. What… I couldn’t possibly stop loving you; I know this, because I’ve imagined what that might be like. God, you don’t know how many times I’ve imagined coming home and finding that you’d moved out, that you’d grown tired of waiting for me to return. I wrote to you all the time and got barely even a word back from you; it really wasn’t that far of a stretch for the imagination now, was it? What could possibly make you think I don’t love you?” 

Sherlock’s reluctant gaze studied the metal chemistry table before he finally looked up at John, steeling himself. “Oh, I don’t know, John. Perhaps the fact that you jumped in front of a bullet?” 

Everything inside John immediately froze up and he straightened his spine, becoming the soldier once more. “I had to.” 

“No you didn’t,” Sherlock said. His eyes were reflective pools as they bore into John’s face. “Mycroft told me, John! You took the bullet for someone else! Why would you do that if you loved me? I could have lost you!” Sherlock cried brokenly, his voice and face shattering. 

John had to look away, because it wasn’t Sherlock he saw looking back at him. He braced his hands on his thighs and took a deep breath. 

“His fiance gave birth to two healthy girls while he was away,” John said softly. “He talked about them constantly. All he could think about was how much he wanted to get back to them. They didn’t know when he left; he got the news during a 1 minute phone call and he cried for hours that night; because he was just so happy or because he couldn’t be there, I don’t know. Both, I think. 

“Dana, his fiance, sent a picture of all of them. His girls were standing in the backyard, two years old already. They had hair so blond it looked almost white in the sun. He told me how scared he was that they wouldn’t like him when he finally got to meet them. That they might grow up to hate him one day. 

“He liked to talk about the wedding. His wife’s favorite colour was orange. He wanted there to be little yellow flowers on the girls’ orange dresses, because that was his favorite colour. 

“He talked about how, when they first met, D’s hair was long, but a while before he left she cut it to past her ears. She was so worried that he wouldn’t like it that she stayed out all day, but when he finally saw her, he fell in love all over again, because he had never seen her look so happy before. He…” John giggled gently. “Was pretty sure that’s the day he became a father.” 

Tears slipped silently down John’s cheeks and Sherlock reached out to him, suddenly kneeling in front of him, and cupped John’s face in his hands, wiping away the tears with shaky fingers. In the absence of words, John took a shaky breath. 

“There was one night that I couldn’t sleep, because for some reason my heart was racing and I felt like I couldn’t breathe - I’d never had a panic attack before then - so he took me outside and pointed up at the sky and told me about how he used to want to be an astronaut, but he never followed through with it, so he found it quite fitting that Dana was an astronomer.” 

John suddenly lost his composure and the words were silenced in his throat as his face crumbled. 

“I’m sorry, John,” Sherlock said softly. “I’m so sorry.” 

John began to sob, tears racing down his cheeks as his body shook. Sherlock wrapped his arms around John’s neck and tucked his head against John’s, absorbing the shockwaves. 

“He didn’t deserve that, Sherlock,” John said brokenly. “He should have gotten to go home. He should have gotten to marry Dana and meet his children and hold them in his arms.” John wiped at his face with a trembling hand. “Instead, they’ll only ever know him by his picture and other people’s memories of him, because I was too late. They shot off a couple rounds, but that one bullet was enough." 

Sherlock listened as John sobbed, brushing his fingers over John’s short, still-blond hair until eventually he became silent. When John finally turned his face up to him, Sherlock reached for John’s hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed John’s palm, tears pricking his own eyes. “I’ve missed you so much, John. I love you. I’m so happy you’re home.” 

John nodded. “Me, too,” he managed hoarsely. 

Sherlock stood, still holding John’s hand. “Come on, let’s go to bed.” 

John rose with him and followed Sherlock into their room, the clacking of Gladstone’s nails following after them. Sherlock laid down and John sank to his knees and crawled over Sherlock. He paused over him, studying Sherlock’s wide, open eyes as they held John’s gaze before he bent down to kiss him heatedly with damp lips. John’s eyelashes were still damp and they brushed Sherlock’s cheek as his eyelashes fluttered closed. 

Smiling softly, Sherlock reached up to brush them with his fingertips. 

“Never will I not love you, John,” he said. He leaned in and kissed John’s eyelids, then laid his head down on the pillow. John opened his eyes, surprised that Sherlock was pulling away, and smiled back. 

“You need sleep, John,” Sherlock said, reaching up to peck him once more. 

John laughed and sank onto the bed beside Sherlock. “You need sleep,” he said deflectively before leaning into Sherlock’s space and pressing a quick kiss to his cheekbone. Sherlock rolled his eyes and reached down to tug the blanket up over their heads. He burrowed closer to John so he could kiss him better and their limbs tangled as they kissed languidly in the comfortable silence of their makeshift cocoon. 

As tired as Sherlock was, he could never get tired of kissing John.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be the last part of the series, but there's still more I would like to explore with these two, so expect another fic for this series.
> 
> I always love to get comments, so if you have the time, let me know what you think of this!
> 
> If you would like to follow me on tumblr, [here's](http://whichwolfwins.tumblr.com/) where to find me! :)


End file.
